The loss of bone in the jaws from disease or trauma can be debilitating for patients. Clinicians have for many years depended on different materials to reconstruct the area. These have included bone from another part of the body, artificial materials, or processed bone from humans or animals. Many of these have disadvantages including limited amounts, concerns with disease transmission, inability to form the shape needed and low potential to regrow bone. In addition, recent studies have shown that bone healing in diabetes decrease the amount of newly formed bone.
Patients with diabetes are more prone to fractures, periodontitis, and other bone related issues as compared to healthy individuals. Current bone healing materials are less efficacious in diabetic patients than in non-diabetic patients; increased inflammation in diabetic patients is hypothesized to be a contributing factor. The chronic inflammation associated with diabetes disrupts normal bone physiology, inhibiting bone growth and causing bone resorption. Because of this, diabetic patients often have much longer healing times for fractures and have higher rates of non-integration with bone grafts. Diabetics require new bone repair methods that take this inflammation into account and reverse it to allow for improved healing.